My Mindset Is My Biggest Enemy

After nearly a month at my new job, I realize these feelings about facing “new” experiences are worth documenting.

After leaving my position of over 5 years in 2022, I went through MBA, rest, and my first job in Japan. While time passed quickly, repeatedly starting anew over these two years feels fresh in my life. I especially need to develop methods to stabilize myself from the anxiety of facing new things.

I don’t really remember how I felt starting my first job after I got my bachelor degree. Back then, knowing everything was a fresh start, I wasn’t particularly nervous. But at this point in life, people have expectations of you. With each job transition, you’re immediately expected to show that “you know how things work.” No matter how much your supervisor or colleagues reassure you that it’s only been a month and to take it slow, we all know— It’s fine now, but soon it won’t be.

My Mindset Is My Biggest Enemy

What terrifies and troubles me most is: “I don’t know what I don’t know.” This is the source of my anxiety, which spans several aspects:

Expectations of My Mentor

My mentor is much younger than me but joined the company right after graduation. In other words, she’s my senior at the company. Having been influenced by Korean workplace culture, I’m used to determining my attitude based on years of experience. This is my first time having a mentor at work, so besides adapting to company culture, learning how to balance this cooperation is something I need to relearn.

I heard from friends that new graduates in Japan are special. Because their selection process is very rigorous, theoretically their abilities should be decent, and compared to mid-career hires, they’re more familiar with the company. Having a new graduate senior as a mentor brings many conveniences - she seems to know all the company’s history and gossip. However, due to the nature of new graduates, there’s some gap between what she can guide me on and what the company expects from me. This plants the seed of “not knowing what I don’t know.” Because she doesn’t really understand what I need to know, sometimes she can’t truly help me, and our conversations become more like casual chats.

Typically, new graduates aren’t immediately assigned to specific positions and may work for a while before being assigned to relevant areas. This aligns with many product managers’ career paths, as many, like me, take various roles before becoming product managers. For today’s all-encompassing product manager role, this experience makes sense.

However, each company, even different teams within the same company, has different expectations for product managers. Some companies specifically recruit product managers with different attributes, and product managers who’ve only worked at one company may have limited perspectives on job responsibilities.

The company may have hired me specifically for my years of experience at different companies - value I need to bring, which isn’t necessarily something my mentor would know. Additionally, I need to figure out how to lead projects without stepping on others’ toes.

Accepting My Limitations and Defeats

Another aspect of “not knowing what I don’t know” comes directly from culture shock. Returning to a large company means following certain rules and dealing with historical factors. While I may not have historical baggage, I might unknowingly raise inappropriate issues due to lack of context.

At the root, I realize my anxiety comes from not frequently changing work environments. Though I adapt quickly, I’m not used to “not knowing” things. After losing my previous ability to know who can handle what, I need to relearn asking very basic questions, which is surprisingly difficult.

During my third week, at my regular counseling session, I mentioned the pressure I felt when my boss completed tasks I should have done. The counselor asked several questions to help understand this pressure source, then suddenly pointed out:

“So you’re anxious because you feel like you lost?”

I said: “Oh yeah, that’s exactly it!”

This goes back to long ago - I’ve always enjoyed answer-finding games and was quite good at them. If someone in a translation group asked how to translate a word or how to say something in Japanese or Korean, I’d race to Google or books to find answers - Often the first one to get the right answers. I also enjoyed guessing songs and word games.

While my memory isn’t the best, I’ve always liked finding answers faster than others, so when someone beats me to something, it’s uncomfortable.

The counselor’s observation was crucial. She added: “When you feel like you’ve lost, you’re already comparing. What do you want to do about this?”

I said: “Actually, I want to see how my boss handles this project and how she designs the logging flow and analysis. But she hasn’t invited me to relevant meetings, so I felt awkward asking. I figured I’d let it go.”

The counselor said: “So you’re giving up because you think you can’t win?” (I think she was holding back laughter, and I wanted to laugh too because it sounds ridiculous when said aloud.)

By this point, I knew the answer. I saw my own narrow-mindedness - if I had approached it with a learning mindset, I wouldn’t have given up. I would have sought learning opportunities.

I quickly asked: “But I don’t know how to stop comparing myself to my boss.”

The counselor replied: “Why not try accepting that you’ve lost? Focus on what you want to do?”

My Mindset Is My Biggest Enemy

Another colleague said during our 1-on-1: “You know, now is the best time to ask questions. If you don’t ask now, it’ll be harder to ask in your third month or after a year.”

Of course I know! But my mindset is my biggest enemy.

Anxieties like “not knowing what I don’t know” and “not knowing where to start asking” keep spinning in my mind. But thinking carefully, these anxieties might come from expecting too much of myself. I want to be the “knowledgeable person,” the “answer-finder,” not the newcomer constantly asking questions.

But work is a continuous learning process. With each new environment, we face new challenges and unknowns. Perhaps, as my counselor suggested, I need to accept my learning state first, accept my temporary “not understanding” and “inability.”

Today when asking questions, someone directly replied: “It’s already written in the specifications, it’s OO.” Usually I’d feel scolded, but after going through this mental journey, I feel a bit better. Someone must not know the answer, someone must find it hard to ask, but this foolish newcomer (me) helped by asking, and now they know the answer too.

No Wonder They Say Product Managers Need Experience

There are some pleasant aspects of the new job. During countless meetings, I start experiencing those “Ah, I see!” moments. Past experiences scattered everywhere suddenly fit into place. When hearing discussions about certain features, a little lightbulb goes off: “Hey, didn’t we step into this pitfall before?” When the team mentions user pain points, I find myself nodding: “Yes, yes! I know this! This makes sense!”

Those seemingly scattered work experiences on my resume suddenly become meaningful, even my brief eight-month previous job helps me find direction in current product development. Perhaps this is why people always say product managers need experience - because every seemingly unrelated past experience eventually becomes useful at some point, which feels really interesting.

My Love-Hate Relationship with Japanese

Using Japanese at work is also challenging. Although I graduated from Japanese studies, where everyone had to pass JLPT N1 to graduate and write theses in Japanese, I’ve rarely used it since graduation except for occasional freelance work or emergency situations at work.

I’m always insecure about Japanese. University experiences left quite a shadow - my Japanese was never as good as my Korean, and I struggled expressing myself with honorifics and humble language. Communicating in Japanese often weakened my already fragile confidence. My classmates mastered Japanese early and spoke without accents; some could converse with professors in Japanese from the first basic Japanese class. This made my four years of study very painful, without any sense of achievement. After nearly ten years of barely using Japanese in my career, I had no real reason to improve.

However, after job hunting in Japan, although I encountered the notion that “Japanese isn’t very necessary in professional fields” and experienced this in my interviews, where Japanese speaking ability wasn’t a barrier, that small gap of “understanding but struggling to respond properly” rekindled my childhood motivation and joy in learning Japanese. That tiny gap was too tempting to ignore.

I found a Japanese teacher for weekly speaking practice, and before starting work, at least reached a level where speaking Japanese wasn’t awkward.

Last year when I first returned to Japan from the Netherlands, I unconsciously said “Can I have a…latte?” at a coffee shop, which Philip laughed about for a long time. Ordering in Japanese shouldn’t be that difficult for me.

My current job’s Japanese expectations aren’t high - understanding written and spoken Japanese is sufficient. My aversion to Japanese has gradually decreased. It’s good to know that learning a language doesn’t require perfect speech or correct particles.

However, I still feel manipulated by Japanese. In Japanese meetings, I focus too much on my supervisor’s and colleagues’ beautiful Japanese, treating it like a language class. (Somehow I realy enjoy observing how people talk in a language I want to learn!)

Combined with my unclear understanding of background information and ambition to learn Japanese, I exhaust myself. Even forcing myself to speak Japanese in conversations and specification discussions, as if taking an oral exam.

Last week, after examining what I was doing, I confessed to my mentor: “I think speaking Japanese is my greed. I should probably give it up for now.”

After all, I’m here to work, not to learn Japanese.